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If migrant labor for U.S. agriculture is cut off, we’ll all be importing food instead

Eno came by the other day to visit. He leaned against his pickup in the driveway as he talked. He and his family had worked on our farm, starting in the 1990s and up until a few years ago. Both Eno and his wife studied and memorized all kinds of facts related to U.S. history, presidents and the Constitution in order to become citizens. Even Eno’s old papa, Philemon, after two tries, managed to make it to citizenship.Today, Eno is no longer our farm foreman and he’s nearing retirement, but his daughter and son-in-law own a trucking firm, his other daughter is in law school at University of Idaho, and his son Carlos, is just beginning college. Anyway you cut it, they are a success story of immigrants come to America.Our current leadership in Washington would like us to believe that immigrants and immigration are a problem to be solved. But from our farming perspective, they are instead a solution. We’re thankful for all that Eno and his family did for our farm, moving irrigation pipes, driving trucks, hoeing fields, picking tare off potato diggers. They worked long, hard hours. Most Idaho farmers and dairymen rely on immigrant labor and frankly, the only real problem we see is how to acquire the workers we need in an efficient and legal manner.

 

 

 

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Idaho Statesman
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